Lots of Puff Pastry

Tuesday was our first Intermediate practical and we made Gateau St Honore.  The base of this cake is puff pastry.  There is an outer ring of choux pastry with profiteroles (cream-filled choux pastry) placed on top of the ring.  The profiteroles are dipped in caramel and almond flakes.  The middle of the cake is filled with cream.  Then it's topped off with spun sugar.  I was pretty happy with my results.

Our practical today was more puff pastry.  We had made the puff pastry on Tuesday and used it today for two pastries.  The first was a Pithivier which is puff pastry filled with baked almond cream.  A Pithivier can be filled with anything sweet or savory.

I have a confession to make.  This is actually the chef's Pithivier.  The chefs usually don't make anything during our practicals, but one student was missing today and our chef used her puff pastry.  The last thing we had to do today was grab our Pithivier off the cooling rack and place it on the cake board.  I was busy cleaning my station and then went to get my pithivier.  Everybody already had their's.  I saw only one left on the racks and grabbed it.  The chef had really nice things to say about it (now I know why).  I packed it up and went to meet a couple friends that were in Basic, but are not doing Intermediate.  I showed them my pastries and started looking very closely at the Pithivier.  I noticed some scoring (the lines in the pastry) around the edges that I didn't remember doing.  Then I looked at the scoring on the dome and saw how perfectly spaced it was and knew mine wasn't that great.  That's when I realized that I must have grabbed the chef's.  Oops!  I'm really bummed because I wanted to see how mine turned out.  The chef probably went to take his home or to share with the other staff and thought hmmm, what happened here?  I'll have to ask him about it next week.

We also made Strawberry Mille-Feuille which is layers of puff pastry, jam, puff pastry, cream, strawberries, cream, and puff pastry.  Then we topped it off with fondant (not the cake fondant we use in the US) and chocolate piping.  I know for sure that this one is mine.

My first week of intermediate went well.  I'm feeling more comfortable in the kitchen.  It also helps that everything we did this week is made up of things we've made before.